Former state Supreme Court Justice Sanders pleads for another chance

At The Seattle Times stop of the "I was misunderstood" image-rehabilitation tour, former state Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders arrived carrying two thick manila folders and a chastened attitude.

Remember Sanders? He was on his way to a fourth term on Washington's highest court when someone asked him why African Americans are overrepresented in the state prison population. Sanders' answer — because they commit more crimes — was callous and factually incorrect. The resulting political conflagration ended his judicial career.

"I think about it every day," he says. "It weighs on me."

I wrote the Opinion page editorial rescinding The Times' endorsement of Sanders. When he asked to meet last week, I was game. Even more so when he let slip this news flash: Sanders may seek the bench again — if, he cautions, the media will give him a fair shake.

Sanders says he won't try to unseat the man who beat him last fall, Justice Charlie Wiggins. That contest is too far away. But Justice Gerry Alexander retires at the end of the year and Sanders would like to be the governor-appointed successor.

So has the man who said "certain minority groups" are "disproportionally represented in prison because they have a crime problem" — and later added, "I think that's obvious" — tempered his views?

Sanders says his past remarks were answers in which he had "just a snippet in time." Still, they set the stage for voters to weigh Sanders' beloved libertarian streak against racial obtuseness.

It is also how six months later a former justice — who has had to explain antics that include dressing as a Nazi for a costume party to writing for his college newspaper that Martin Luther King's assassination was a suicide — finds himself explaining again.

Unlike before, Sanders has thought about the issues and is less prone to stereotypes. Indeed, he sounded at times like he was channeling Malcolm X.

"A young black man is born behind the eight ball."

Meaning?

"There are attitudes that are possessed by individuals and stereotypes that may make a police officer think a black guy driving his car in a white neighborhood might be a burglar," Sanders says.

Other societal actions make it more likely for minorities to find themselves behind bars than whites committing the same wrongdoing, from pretextual stops by law enforcement to the selective, and arguably disproportionate, way decisions are made about who to charge with a crime and who to let go.

Sanders isn't done. Racial biases can spur police searches without probable cause, arrests that don't include Miranda rights and jury selections "where the last black guy is stricken from the jury in order to have an all-white panel."

"There's no better guy on the court to stand up for these people's rights," Sanders says, trading Malcolm for Candidate Sanders.

About King's death being a suicide, what were you thinking?

"The things King was doing placed a target on his back; he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind," he replied diffidently.

Dressing up as a Nazi? "Would it have made the paper if I had dressed as Stalin?"

This public tour is going to be short if the answers don't improve.

Sanders still doesn't get it. He is so desperate to be understood, to be seen as he sees himself — preferably, it seems, before the next judicial race — that he hasn't bothered to learn why some of his views and antics are repulsive.

Its not hard to understand. The woman whose question unraveled Sanders' career hid a fundamental plea behind her query about why African Americans, who represent about 4 percent of Washington's population, are nearly 20 percent of the state prison population.

Yes, most people in prison did something to land there. But Sanders was asked to add thoughtful context, which he can now spout like a student before test day but will forget later.

Nice try. But I believe when people show you who they are, believe them. Former Justice Sanders has been showing us since his college days.

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her email address is lvarner@seattletimes.com